This article from Helpguide.org provides tons of advice for parents on helping their kids to cope with separation and divorce. The article starts with this sobering advice for parents:

For children, divorce can be stressful, sad, and confusing. At any age, kids may feel uncertain or angry at the prospect of mom and dad splitting up. As a parent, you can make the process and its effects less painful for your children. Helping your kids cope with divorce means providing stability in your home and attending to your children’s needs with a reassuring, positive attitude. It won’t be a seamless process, but these tips can help your children cope.

The article starts with advice about how to tell the kids if you have decided to get a divorce. (For more information see our thorough treatment of the subject at How Should I Tell My Kids We’re Getting a Divorce?). From there the article covers some major things parents can do to help kids following a divorce. They include:

Listen and Reassure

Providing Stability and Structure

Taking Care of Yourself

Working With Your Ex

Knowing When to Seek Help

Obviously, one article can’t tell you everything you need to know in order to help your child with this major event their life, but this is a solid and thorough article packed full of useful advice.

At Divorce Ministry 4 Kids, they have compiled a free e-book with contains one page infographics with information and advice on helping kids deal with common emotions that come with the divorce of their parents. The book include help on dealing with feelings of:

Donald Harting is a child of divorce. His parents separated when he was eight years old and divorced when he was 15. He knows what it is like to lose an intact family and deal with the repercussions of divorce. As a way to honor his parents, he has built a living memorial to them in the form of free books to help other children of divorced parents. You can find the program here.

And, the program does not offer just any books. They have researched the best books available for preschool aged, elementary aged, middle school aged and teenaged children of divorce and picked the best book for each category. As a result of their research they offer the following books for each category of children:

Preschool/Kindergarten

Using watercolor illustrations and gentle explanations, Mama and Daddy Bears Divorce discusses changes (like Daddy moving out), but reassures little ones that important things will stay the same. As Dinah learns, “her daddy would always be her daddy, and her mama would always be her mama.” (Description from FSCC).

LINK

ABOUT THE SITE

This website is the homepage of Christina McGhee. Christina is a divorce coach and parent educator. The focus of her work is on “helping children and families successfully manage the challenges of divorce.” The focus of much of what Christina does is to help children and families to use the difficult events and circumstances they find themselves in as a result of divorce as a catalyst for positive change.

AVAILABLE RESOURCES

Divorce and Children is packed full of useful information for divorced and divorcing who desire to help their children adjust. One of the best features of this page is a collection of resources for parents. These articles are packed full of great information for parents and cover topics like:

From kidshealth.org, this article is intended to help parents who are currently going through a divorce. The article starts with the following honest assessment:

What’s the best way to help your family get through a divorce? Every situation — and every family — is different. But some stress reducing guidelines might make the adjustment a bit easier.

These suggestions can make the process less painful for kids, teens, and families. Parents will need to interpret them in their own ways; honesty, sensitivity, self-control, and time itself will help the healing process. Be patient — not everyone’s timetable is the same.

Editor's Note: Links to resources from I Am A Child of Divorce do not necessarily represent an endorsement of, or agreement with, everything contained within those sites or in the resource linked to. While we do review every resource which we link to from I Am A Child Of Divorce, there are times where we disagree or have issues with some of the content presented. However, we still elect to make a link to the site available to the users of this site. In those cases, we have judged that the overall benefit of the resource outweighs any information or advice with which we might disagree.